Crepuscular Light » privacy

Privacy, Policies and Potatoes

Exxx — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:19 +0000

Yesterday I attended (and waffled at) the first of the Keystone Solutions Speaker Series. It was entertaining as well as enlightening, which is not surprising with the Keystone Kids around. The topic of the event was around online privacy and delivering relevant experiences without stalking. In the morning, a great keynote was delivered by Evan LaPointe followed by a hearty panel discussion between (Lord) John Lovett, John Pestana, Lee Isensee and Jojoba (aka Michele Hinojosa). Then I said some stuff about the online privacy of potatoes or something.

Following lunch, we broke into roundtable discussions with set questions, which was fascinating as everyone in the room was clearly interested in the subject and ready to debate all sides of the argument. I cheated like a big cheating cheater, because we were asked to move to different tables and questions after a set amount of time but I stuck like glue to “Is privacy really an issue given the way people share using social media” (apart from a quick stint at a WAA Code of Ethics discussion).

Over the course of the afternoon, I sat with a host of seriously smart folks from Dell, USAA, Travelocity, IBM, ObservePoint, Trend Micro, HomeAway and more to debate this topic. I mainly took notes and muttered some things about potatoes so what follows is a summary of some of the table discussions. This is by no means exhaustive coverage of the conversations – largely because I was continually distracted from my note-taking by the interesting chats.

One clear feeling was that “privacy” has a different meaning for different people and it was generally agreed that solving any identified issues around privacy would be far from pleasing the majority. Having choice, options and control over privacy is part of managing the expectations of people around how they expect their data to be used. Facebook came up again and again, not as a problem in itself, but as a prime example of the fact that users seem to find privacy controls and data maintenance a chore. There were some who felt that Facebook’s privacy policy changes were launched upon the customers without warning and violated the original agreement a user made when signing up to the service – i.e. a user had accepted one set of terms, but now the data from that time was subject to different terms. Others felt that Facebook was a record and that if you didn’t want to share something, it shouldn’t be posted online and that if you publicly share something, you understand that your ownership of that data cannot remain purely yours. All agreed that an individual’s privacy can be controlled and manipulated by their social circle – i.e. your image can be shared by another on Facebook, a comment about you can be tweeted by someone on Twitter etc. Privacy hijacking by your “friends” is all the more worrying when they will give up your data in exchange for a better experience – for example, giving apps access to friend lists.

It was enthralling to hear the different viewpoints of people who clearly all had differing personal definitions of “privacy”. Diana Huang – hi-frickin’-larious woman that she is – thought that there could be excessive takes on privacy like closing yourself off completely to online sharing. This she captured succinctly with the question “Really? Are you German?” before observing that food, sex and laziness are influencers on the way that people feel about their own privacy and its protection. (I’ll leave out her boiling frogs analogy, but only because I plan to steal it). In terms of defining privacy, it was suggested that education and standardisation is a key component of diffusing fear through a common understanding of what “privacy” means online.

Privacy also appears to have differing definitions between tools and the sucking of data out of tools by apps was considered to be more of a threat than a tool itself (for example Facebook apps that demand access to friend lists and so on). Having your friends’ data being used as a behavioural influence was thought to be over the line – i.e. linking a friend to a product in an ad – because the whole concept is sharing with friends, not asking your friend to buy a product.

Several at the table were in favour of personalised privacy policies, where one could agree or disagree to various portions, rather than having an “all or nothing” situation where a stark choice is given to the user – accept the terms or you don’t get access to this.

We came back several times to the questions “Is there actually an issue? Or do we think there is because the implications of “fixing” it affect us so much? Is the media inventing the issue?”. If users make a fuss about changes, but ultimately continue to use a service and don’t vote with their mouses by boycotting social media, should we just test the boundaries to see where the line actually is? We wondered if Forrester might do some research on the topic to gauge the size of the problem.

Trust could possibly be an issue simply because innovation on the internet is so rapid that people are made uncomfortable and miss the human element. During the earlier panel discussion, John Pestana had stated that he will not buy from an online store that does not provide a phone number. During a table discussion, an example was offered of people preferring to hand over their credit card details on the phone to a person in a remote call center, rather than online via a secure service. Without this human touch and emotional reassurance, the internet becomes a potential scary monster. Like the Cookie Monster with a machete.

A troubling topic was the idea of building a person and identity through collecting the bits and pieces of data and behaviours that users drop when they navigate their way through the internet – connecting the dots to observe people in the online wild. Lee Isensee noted that observing one polar bear teaches you nothing about polar bears, but watching a hundred polar bears teaches you about their behaviours and habits – i.e. that behavioural analytics, not web analytics should be the focus of the privacy debate.

We also touched on mobile browsing and the fact that users tend to feel that the value exchanged for data on mobile is greater (Chauncy Maddox pointed out that she wants her widgets to be “synchy” and was content to hand over data to achieve this wondrous state) – as a result of this, the growing adoption of internet-ready mobile devices will probably make a lot of internet issues vanish in the future. And with that we will probably have a slew of new concerns as anonymous privacy concerns are replaced by worry over geo-location data.

People will always complain about privacy controls – we agreed that this is a given – the debate on what we do about the complaints will go on for some time to come.

And after all that I was hungry and ate my own weight in potato.

Thanks to the team at Keystone and their helpers and sponsors for a great event!

Avinash Kaushik – Man 2.0

Exxx — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 09:00:45 +0000

This is the Silly Series. Don’t be afraid. Take a deep breath, a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive. Come with me on this journey to meet the extraordinary people in web analytics.

Today, it’s the turn of Avinash Kaushik, a man who would probably give you the shirt off his back if you asked him nicely. But don’t do that – I don’t want him to catch a cold.

Avinash, tell us a little about you.

I am the co-founder of a start-up called Market Motive, it offers training and certification courses. I am also the Analytics Evangelist for Google and the author of Web Analytics 2.0 & Web Analytics: An Hour a Day.

100% of the proceeds of BOTH your books go to charities (The Smile Train, Médecins Sans Frontières and The Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation). Are you out of your freakin’ mind?

I started my blog to give back some of the knowledge I had gained from others in the industry. So six months later when Wiley said they wanted to make it into a book and give me $10,000 to write it, I turned to my sweetheart and said: “We’ll never have this much money in a single chq and since it came from a labor of love why don’t we give it away to benefit others.” I was amazed at how quickly she said yes (instantly deepening my love for her).

But that was just the start of the process. Much to my astonishment the first book sold more than 20,000 copies in just the first year, translations in six languages etc etc. Needless to say our chq from Wiley at the end of the year was significantly bigger than anticipated.

Though we knew how much money we could possibly make, the decision to donate all my proceeds to charity from the second book was even easier. We had gotten letters, we had seen Smile Pinki, we felt privileged to have another chance to do a very very tiny part for charities whose core mission is to change the lives.

Both books have sold well enough to enable us to donate over $150,000 to charity thus far. How awesome is that!

I am immensely grateful to people who buy the books and to the sweet delightful magnificent people who read my little blog and comment on it and inspire me to work harder every day.

If you were to get hit on the head tomorrow and forget all you know about web analytics, what new career path would you like to follow?

Pilot. Supersonic and subsonic planes.

I have always wanted to do that.

Do you think that people are right to worry about their online privacy in terms of the use of tracking tools?

Yes.

As a consumer you should know what the privacy settings are in your browser and use them. For example, I don’t allow third party cookies to be set in my browser. If you visit certain sites frequently then glance at their privacy policies and if you think they are untrustworthy use them in a browser where you have javascript and cookies and flash etc turned off (one of my browsers is preset to this mode, IE!). Ultimately you are responsible for your own privacy.

As a website owner you should have a very very clear privacy policy that says in as simple terms as possible what you track and instructions on how to opt out. Here’s my humble attempt: Occam’s Razor Privacy Policy. An informed customer that trusts your website is always better. Oh and don’t be one of the jackhammers who snoops your customer’s browser history and does other sub-optimal stuff. It is just not worth it, no matter how cool you think it is.

As a web analytics vendor you should provide choice to the businesses that use your tools. Don’t be one of those lame vendors that use third party cookies to “opt out of tracking”. Have the courage to develop better opt out options like plugins. If a business’s website visitor have choice they are more likely to trust the website they are on which is great for everyone.

As a web analyst don’t be the aforementioned jackhammer, it is simply not worth it. Even if you can’t track 30% of your website traffic, know that you have 50x more data than is available via any other Marketing channel. Collect anonymous data. If you need PII data for analysis (and only 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 do) then your first choice should be to store it outside cloud based analytics tools, and if you store it in cloud based tools then for the love of Jesus and Allah and Krishna please disclose it clearly in your website’s privacy policy.

Consumers should worry about privacy. They should always have a choice. We (consumers, site owners, vendors & analysts) should ensure that choice exists, and we should work hard to earn the trust of website users.

Who is your superhero-sans-cape in the web analytics community and why?

Michael Notté, Kris Irizawa and Gemma Muñoz Vera.

The hardest job in Web Analytics is that of a Practitioner. Consultant is easy. Twitter “Influencer” is easier. “Guru” is the easiest. Living in the front lines, dealing with practical, hard “chill you to your bone” issues is really really hard. I love Gemma, Kris and Michael because they deal with those challenges, and are very good at solving them.

The lovely part is that they then come back and share their lessons so that you and I can feel inspired and benefit from their wisdom. When I read their posts (Gemma’s using Google Translate!) I feel their passion to make their company more data driven, one day at a time.

I love them.

What is the oddest question you’ve ever taken during a speaking engagement?

Questions that start with: “Compared to television the web does not…”

What is your wish for the remainder of 2011?

I hope analytics professionals will continue to shift to business analysis from data analysis.

I hope web analytics vendors will kill 50% of their useless reports (100% would be too much to ask).

I hope people who populate our industry would be happy.

How long is a long tail, if measured in pieces of string?

It depends. ^)

What do you think is the greatest threat to the future of web analytics?

Nothing.

More people are using more devices to consume more data from websites and applications that are collecting ever more (anonymous) data with permission. Analysis of web data has only one way to go: Up.
If a young person asked me I would recommend this field as a recession proof career, if the young person is willing to invest in becoming an Analysis Ninja.

There will be bumps in the road. There will be legislation and tool evolution and privacy firestorms and… well other stuff. But we (data analysis) are here. We are awesome. People better get used to it!

Web analytics is more art than science. Discuss.

It is.

I wrote in a comment on my blog the other day that sometimes data informs insights and at other times insights / gut feel / HiPPO’s request inform the type of analysis we do / the data we use. The best Analysts I know of are ones who have the capacity to be agile in using their right brain AND their left brain.

Check out the full list of interviews in the Silly Series here!

Michael D Healy – Exchange Man

Exxx — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 09:03:14 +0000

Do you know all you need to know about the people of web analytics? Probably – but I’m here to share more anyway.

Today, it’s time to talk to Michael D Healy (can’t believe I forgot to ask him what the D stands for).

Michael, tell us something about yourself – include something about baseball that I won’t understand.

When I was a just a kid at a baseball game, I tried to figure out the exchange rate should the team at bat want to return a run off the board in exchange for the team on the field returning an out. Now we could potentially calculate this meaningless metric, if someone asked for it.

The method by which people make decisions and communicate the different phases of decision making is what I am working in as a web analytics consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area. Clients sometimes really want to know what the trade-off between outs and runs might be . . .

My wife works here in SF as well; we live in an urban environment bordering several very awesome parks which are somehow largely devoid of transients. Our daughter enjoys those parks almost as much as ‘Yo Gabba Gabba!‘ . . . DJ Lance Rock email me if you need some help dude!

We don’t cook as much as everyone else in the community apparently does, a walkscore of 100 gets us up and out too often to be in the kitchen cooking this and that. If you are coming to eMetrics in SF here are a few of my recommendations:

The Monk’s Kettle – Aweseome, but BUSY!
La Meizi – Spicy Sichuan Cuisine, only for those who like spicy food
The French Laundry – Hope you have your reservations already

What book are you reading at the moment?

After my Analysis Exchange project with the New Zealand Drug Foundation, an org dedicated to ‘reducing the harmful effects of drugs based on the best evidence possible’, I started re-reading ‘Drug War Heresies.’

Did you know they served cocaine laced wine in the White House, the Vatican and Thomas Edison’s house? Vin Mariani.

If web analytics was a country, which one would it be and why?

France.

Lots of sophisticated foodies who can appreciate a range of human expression. On the other hand, we are at times depending on an intellectual Maginot Line to ensure our continued survival.

You are a mentor in the Analysis Exchange – is that because you think you’re the best thing since segmented wheat products?

Hmmmmmm . . . wheat products.

Taking care of the people who take care of you, and finding time to work in some people who just need your help, seems like a pretty good way to go about your business.

Who is your superhero-sans-cape in the web analytics community and why?

Since I already nominated ETP for the community web analytics award of the year, my answer is June Dershewitz.

She is someone who is consistent in her attention to, and always actively looking out for, the interests of web analysts near and far. Doing that while at the same time keeping everything laid back is a pretty cool quality.

If you knew the real reason behind the chicken crossing the road, who is the first person you’d tell?

Chick-fil-A. They could catch them all, produce more tasty chicken sandwiches and then expand their operations.

What is your wish for 2011?

My wife to approve the red one for our (almost) one year old daughter.

GO FAST!

Complete the sentence: “I am a web analytics nerd because…”.

The Analytics Scroll is blank.

No, that’s not from damn Kung Fu Panda . . . originally.

You win 2 free passes to eMetrics – to whom do you give the other pass?

Hold a contest for needy attendees where they submit:

1) 100 words why they would like to go

2) 100 words describing a problem, inputs, and analysis

3) One slick chart, graph or whatever illustrating that problem or a solution

Pick the winner based on individual awesome-ness and potential to learn at eMetrics.

Is online privacy a myth? Do you care?

I care about transparency in tracking, we should expect and demand honesty to the degree it is possible. If we are being tracked, disclose it.

Curious what Acxiom knows about you? Ask them here. If you are a California resident you have the right to find out what companies know about you, write to their privacy policy address with this form.

The history of privacy is, itself, quite interesting to me:

President Jackson being hauled before the Supreme Court ex parte to stop the Post Office from regularly opening the mail
The 1928 Olmstead decision allowing wiretaps and the 1967 Katz decision, which reversed Olmstead
The Pond post WWII spying
The FBI’s COINTELPRO activities
Plausible deniability in ECHELON
NSA program after 9/11
President’s Surveillance Program data mining everything they can
Building a hub for monitoring in San Francisco, ignoring that a technician may need to fix a wall socket at some point

The saddest development in large scale information collection by governments is, apparently, that this is another area where America is being overtaken by China.

I call on the US Government to re-double their tracking efforts, with mobile technology we are really making it so easy for you. Build a giant Hadoop Cluster somewhere in the middle of the US and just start filling it up. Put the empty missile silos from the Cold War back to use!

Remember when America was the land of dreaming the impossible, and then achieving that dream? We could be there again, Hadoop Cluster of mobile data in 2011!

What do you tell someone who asks you if a stand-alone metric is “bad” if it’s 37%?

1.065.

We used analysis of the data with the ROOT framework from CERN, as well as the Trilinos libraries from Sandia National Laboratories, to build, after a probability proportional to size sampling, an iteratively reweighted least squares estimation because R is for n00bs.

Integrating the iteratively reweighted least squares estimation, or IRLSE as we in the business call it, the model is further validated under Fisher’s Method to clearly prove a paradigm which is neither statistically significant, nor has a meaningful magnitude.

The duality of qualitative outcomes, both “good” and “bad”, are required outputs due to model encompassing the universe of possible, and impossible, outcomes.

Please put on your 3-D glasses so you can appreciate the graphical illustration of the model in the image below. In the image, a “good” result starts on the top surface towards the left of the image. As it transverses the model, “good” becomes “bad” in a very real sense.

To answer your other question, it is a little over 1 run to 1 out, 2 balls and a strike exchange rate.

Check out the full list of interviews in the Silly Series here!

If we track them, do they not tremble? Advocating “Vempathy”

Exxx — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:23:24 +0000

I’m, naturally enough, a believer in visitor tracking. I think it’s perfectly fair to try to understand the visitor experience in order to work on both improving that experience and to maximise a website’s profit/message potential. When I first began working in the industry and fully understood what kind of data could be collected, I remember finding it quite ominous and unsettling. Now that I know how the data is used, I don’t bat an eyelid. However, I think it is important to remember that the vast majority of visitors we track are those outside the industry – if you put yourself in their shoes, you see a much darker picture of targeting and analysis. But if education is all that stands between distrust and acceptance, why are we not trying to teach? Perhaps we should try a little visitor empathy, or “vempathy”.

I interviewed and surveyed a number of people recently to ascertain how they felt about tracking generally. This was spawned by the fact that when someone asks me what I do (which results in explaining what my company does), I generally find them to be both bored and terrified – a very remarkable combination and one which illustrates the fact that many visitors who claim to distrust tracking will very seldom do anything to counter it. Lethargic horror is probably the most exploited aspect of website visitors.

Most of those I spoke to were shocked to discover what could be learned about them in a single visit and described themselves as suspicious, paranoid and manipulated as a result. I then asked if they would feel differently if this was a site they visited often.
No.
Would they feel differently if they knew that the data was being used to improve their experience on the website?
No.
Would they feel differently if they knew the data would be used to generate tailored advertising?
No.
Would they feel differently if they knew that personally identifiable information (PII) was not being collected and used?
And this was the turning point. There is an assumption that if “I” am being tracked, then “MY” information is being collected. This seems to be the point that needs clarification.

After that, all hell broke loose. Those I spoke to wanted their permission to be sought before tracking was done, but didn’t want a pop-up or to go to a specific page on the site.

The other feeling, from the remainder of the interviewees, was “indifference”, a sense of fairness that if I go to a “free” website, I should “sell something”. Which, I felt, illustrated a belief that “the data is probably used for something sinister, but who cares”? To my mind, this is just as unwelcome a feeling as one of paranoia. It still paints us as the bad guys, but gives us permission to quietly commit our sins.

In Yahoo! Web Analytics, you can see the “interest categories” of your visitors, based on the Yahoo! properties they visit. Eric Peterson, in a fascinating post, has outlined a browser history hack! With tools like these, it is therefore possible to begin building a profile of your visitors as users of the internet, not just as visitors to your website. And this can surely give you incredible insight. But even I, while finding these possibilities dance-in-my-pants exciting, also sometimes find them dance-in-my-pants disturbing. It’s a reflex and I can settle the little voice inside with my knowledge and understanding of the industry. The general site visitor may not have that luxury. If you look up “website tracking” with a search engine, you will see thousands of results from vendors and analysts, but little (outside of from tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists) along the lines of “Dear Visitor – here are the reasons, without the fancy blurb, why we track your visit and this is what we use the information for”.

Should we be taking greater responsibility for educating website visitors? Should we work on our “vempathy”?

More cookie survey results

Exxx — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:22:30 +0000

In another guest post on the Visual Revenue blog, I discuss the results of my second cookie survey.

*****

I recently surveyed 100 “internet-savvy” people to understand their attitude towards cookies and whether or not they considered cookies to be a privacy or security concern. As a follow-up, I surveyed another group. This time, my focus was the general internet user, who would not beexpected to understand the use of cookies. Getting to my target of 100 took slightly more time in this case as the respondents were not as engaged with the subject!

The survey was posted on a group unrelated to web analytics on LinkedIn.com, on Facebook.com, as comments on some blog posts on the subject of internet privacy, and in 15 random categories on answers.yahoo.com. It was also circulated by email (thanks Andy, Mom, and friends!). To my knowledge, the respondents came from at least 8 countries.

In my previous survey, I asked 5 questions which assumed at least a basic understanding of cookies. In this survey, because I could not make the same assumptions, I asked 6 slightly differently-phrased questions, most of which had a yes/no answer and an optional comment field.

The Results

1) I know that cookies are put on my computer by websites that I visit.

YES 84%

NO 16%

The vast majority of those surveyed knew that cookies were placed on their machines, although several of those who responded “Yes” were under the impression that cookies were only placed by certain types of sites, like forums or social networks.

2) I know what cookies are and understand what they are used for.

YES 57%

NO 43%

Although more than half of the respondents claimed to understand cookies and their usage, quite a few of those who answered “Yes” felt that cookies were solely used for website preferences or helped to load a page faster. The overall understanding seemed rather vague (some considered them to be rather benign viruses) though many grasped the basic concept. It is interesting that although 84% know that cookies are placed on their computers when they visit a website, not all of those have tried to find out what cookies actually are.

3) I know the difference between 1st-party and 3rd-party cookies

YES 35%

NO 65%.

Given the fact that 57% of respondents claimed to understand cookie usage, it is interesting to note that only 35% knew the difference between 1st-party and 3rd-party cookies. However, this segment did appear to genuinely understand the difference between the two types of cookie.

4) I have customised my browser settings with regard to the treatment of cookies.

YES 35%

NO 65%

The responses to this question were interesting. Of the 35% who responded that they had customised their browser settings with regard to the treatment of cookies, several admitted that they had customised their settings, but that they had no idea what the settings now were. On the other hand, there were several whose set-up meant that they were prompted for permission every time there was an attempt to set a cookie. Some blocked all cookies while some accepted them all, so there was no one setting that stood out as the most adopted.

The majority, those who responded that they had not customised their browser settings, commented that they had not changed their browser settings for a variety of reasons – because they did not know how to, because they would not know what they should change them to given their understanding of cookies, because they knew the default settings of their browser or because they regularly used an application to clear out cookies. We can infer from this then that most of the respondents use the default browser settings, which are often to allow 1st-party cookies and reject 3rd-party cookies (though not always: Chrome, by default, accepts all – you can then choose to reject all or “restrict how 3rd-party cookies are used” – I haven’t been able to find out exactly what this means (though I can imagine) but would be curious to know).

I asked this same question in my first survey, the response to which was YES: 42% and NO: 58%.

5) When I visit a website, I look for and read the privacy policy.

Always 5%

Sometimes 41%

Never 54%

Though this question is not directly related to cookies, my interest included attitudes towards privacy on the internet and overall security concerns. The overwhelming feeling that I got was that “life is too short” for reading privacy policies. In addition, all privacy policies were considered to be the same and over-complicated with legal jargon which could hide any dubious statements. In general, it seems that privacy policies are considered a nice-to-have element of a website, but not a crucial part of a visitor’s navigation behaviour.

6) I have privacy concerns specifically regarding cookies being set on my computer by websites I visit.

YES 38%

NO 62%

A similar question in my previous survey (I have concerns about cookies being misused to compromise my privacy) generated exactly the same results. In this case, however, the reasons were slightly different – the distrust of cookies centred more around data being sold on, unwanted viral material etc than profiling and targeting. There was also distrust stemming from a lack of understanding of what cookies are and what they can be used for.

In a fascinating twist, quite a few of those who did not have these concerns said that it was because they did not understand what cookies are and what they can be used for!

Generally, knowing what cookies are does not seem to be a barrier to acceptance. In addition, ignorance of what they are does not seem to be a barrier to acceptance. Most of those surveyed did not know of any problems caused on their computers by cookies and for that reason did not fear them. This did not mean that they knew what cookies were or even had much interest in finding out. Again, as in the first survey, to a large degree, convenience is an important consideration – knowledge that, for example “Bebo forgets me if I delete cookies” outweighs any other possible concerns.

So, all in all, good news for the 1st-party cookie (depending on the default browser settings of your website visitor). For the 3rd-party cookie, however, apathy may mean that it is often blocked and largely misunderstood – like me, as a child

Guest hosty posting

Exxx — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:08:31 +0000

I’ve just moved to WordPress, so I’ll recycle a couple of old posts here.

***August 2009***

The first on 100 “internet-savvy” people and the second on a more general group of 100 people who would not be expected to know what cookies are. I had a guest spot on the Visual Revenue blog and will compile the results of the second survey soon.
Here’s the text of the first post:

This week, I ran a survey on the subject of cookies, cookie deletion and privacy and the results were quite interesting. The survey was run online and had 100 respondents who can generally be assumed to be at least vaguely Internet-savvy. It was sent out to and passed around by Twitter followers who are, in the main, linked to analytics/SEO/SEM etc; to the IT department of a large bank; to the IT department of a small-town local authority; to the staff in the Yahoo! Web Analytic Hungarian office, most of whom are programmers. Respondents came from at least 6 countries that I know of – very possibly more. I had considered broadening the scope of the survey to include those who use the Internet but cannot be considered to be terribly clued up on issues like targeting, tracking, cookies etc, (which would have led to completely different survey questions), but on a quick verbal survey of a small group of those who would be considered to fall into this category, I felt that the results would lose focus. I.e. most did not know what cookies were, what the difference between 1st- and 3rd- party cookies were, and those that did had were not entirely sure what they were used for. Therefore, for my purposes, I assume that this category would generally leave cookie treatment to their default browser settings. I think this group should be treated in a separate survey, which I will leave for another day.

The survey comprised 5 questions, most of which were Yes / No with an optional “Why?” comment.

The Results

1) I block 3rd-party cookies.

YES 36%
NO 64%

Of those who answered “Yes” and commented, the main concern appeared to be around trust and privacy. There was a general consensus that 3rd-party cookies were unsolicited and set by “snoopers“. There was also some concern around the fact that something, however innocuous, was being set on the visitor’s hard drive.
Those who answered “No” were generally far more blasé in their language. 3rd-party cookies were nothing to worry about and could always be deleted if there was some concern about their origin.

2) I block 1st-party cookies.

YES 6%
NO 94%

The overwhelming consensus here was that 1st-party cookies did more good than harm. Convenience (in terms of recognition, logins etc) was cited as a major bonus. What is interesting here is that it appears that visitors don’t mind their browsing behavior tracked or monitored as long as they feel they have been given a choice in the matter. I.e. if I go to Site A, I have no problem with Site A knowing what I looked at, what I bought, and who I am, but I don’t want Company B to know the same information.

3) I manually delete cookies:

Daily
Weeky
Monthly
Never (never delete cookies manually – don’t know browser settings)
Never (never delete cookies manually – auto-delete cookies based on my browser settings)
Other

Unfortunately, due to some over-zealous multi-tasking, “Other” was set not up as a separate choice, but as a comment, which meant you also had to choose one of the time-frames. However, as luck would have it, the vast majority, according to the entries in the “Other” field, indicated that cookies were manually deleted fairly randomly and with no particular pattern (if deleted at all). Most cookie clearances seemed to take place after online financial transactions or if a site visited appeared particularly dubious.
Interestingly, despite the general acceptance that cookies are not insidious pieces of software out to steal your identity, there was quite a high instance of seeing them as having a potential for abuse. I.e. cookies are fine, I love them, I would let my favourite child marry one, but I still wouldn’t trust one set by a site I don’t trust.

4) I have customized my browser settings with regard to cookie blocking and deletion.

YES 42%
NO 58%

Due to the high instance of 3rd-party cookie deletion and non-blocking of 1st-party cookies, it can be inferred from these results that many of the respondents know that their browser settings reject 3rd-party cookies while accepting 1st-party cookie and have left these settings be.

5) I have concerns about cookies being misused to compromise my privacy.

YES 38%
NO 62%

Of those who answered “Yes”” to this question, the comments indicated an uneasiness with being tracked and targeted by advertising companies. There was also a sense of distrust around the potential for abuse – companies using cookies to personally identify visitors, spyware, information theft, malware etc. However, we can infer that some of those who do not entirely trust cookies and their usage also happily accept 1st-party cookies because of the convenience they offer.
Those who answered “No” were generally very emphatic about the fact that they did not suffer from “paranoia”. Understanding the limitations of cookies and the fact that other forms of “spying” were far more threatening were cited as reasons to discount any perceived menace from cookies. It would appear that cookies can be seen to make life easier and that this convenience outweighs most of the worries those in this particular survey group suffer. Visitor choice is key – if someone chooses to visit a particular site, they choose to accept cookies from that site in order to make that site work better. However, this consent does not necessarily extend past that particular domain.

So, cookies are good as long as they’re not bad.